Devotions

The men and women who were headed for the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost (see Acts 1 and 2) loved Jesus dearly. They had been taught in the school of Christ by the Lord himself. Some had performed miracles, healed the sick and cast out demons. They were compassionate and soul-loving, but they weren’t yet qualified to be his witnesses.

They had been nearby when he sweat drops of blood, seen him hanging on the cross, and stood at his empty tomb. They had even watched in awe as he ascended into heaven! Yet they still were not ready to represent him. Why? Because they needed the power of the Holy Spirit to face down the fearsome, corrupt religious leaders of the day.

The Upper Room experience – the day the Holy Spirit fell on the apostles and other followers of Jesus – made all the difference.

Hear Peter’s powerful statement to the chief priests: “And we are his witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32 NKJV). Through the words of the Holy Ghost speaking through Peter, the priests “were furious and plotted to kill them” (Acts 5:33).

Stephen came next, filled with the Holy Ghost, confronting the Sanhedrin court just before his death. “’You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you’…When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth” (Acts 7:51, 54).

When you emerge from seeking God full of his Spirit, you can stand boldly before anyone, and your witness will provoke one of two reactions. They will either cry out, “What must I do to be saved?” or they will resist and challenge you. You will speak words that cut to the heart.

Miracles don’t reside within the walls of a church building. The mighty wind of the Spirit blew all the people out into the streets, into the marketplace. Had we been in the Upper Room looking for revival, supernatural wind and tongues of fire, we would have been directed outside to 120 witnesses on the streets, preaching Jesus in the power of the Holy Ghost. That's where the revival is. That's the outpouring. The wind, the fire, the Spirit — it's now in God's witnesses!

In the last of this three-part series, Gary and Kelly Wilkerson share what they have learned about God’s faithfulness and the power of prayer during times of family crisis.

 Author Elizabeth Stone says about parenting, “The decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” In good times and bad, this is the perfect picture of what it means to be a parent.

As our sons Eliot and Evan battled their addictions, they were out of our reach, yet we felt the full force of their pain. We were sure of only two things: God was bigger than the storm, and our only hope was in him.

How do you pray for your children when Satan attacks? We began by being honest. Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (ESV). God can work with an honest heart, so we laid it all — sorrow, fear, confusion and shame — before him. The Holy Spirit gave us direction. Paul says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

Then we got specific. When you’re in trouble, tell God exactly what you need. Our sons needed a miracle, but they also needed concrete help with counselors, physicians, friends and family who could help guide them back to health and wholeness. We as parents needed patience and wisdom to lead our family on the long road ahead. All of us needed grace and peace.

Finally, we prayed with persistence and faith. Don’t ever underestimate the power of these two things. Never let go; never stop praying. Stand firm in the knowledge that God will never let go of you. We felt his faithfulness as never before during this time. He proved that he always keeps his promise to be with us through everything to the end.

Today, Eliot and Evan are both serving the Lord, and we rejoice and daily thank God for his unending mercy and grace on their lives. If your family is going through a storm, we pray that you too will find your hope and strength in him. He is faithful!

Gary and Kelly’s full story is available on the Gary Wilkerson Podcast.

Paul faced a choice when he found himself in the midst of a storm. He was most likely chained in the bottom of the ship, as was the common practice for transporting prisoners. When he warned the people not to undertake this journey, he was scoffed at and scorned. The voice of truth is constantly set aside as bigoted and out of touch. Eventually it is locked away in the same way that Paul was relegated to the bottom of the ship.

Imagine the unspeakable hardship that Paul once again faced. Nevertheless, in the midst of it all, Paul chose in his heart to forgive these men. He stood before them and said, “For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told” (Acts 27:23-25, ESV).

 Isn’t that amazing? Paul, once an intolerant Pharisee who hauled people out of their homes and tortured them to get them to blaspheme the name of Christ, was now moved with compassion for his oppressors!

We must have the compassion of God flowing out through us. How do we get to such a place? Not merely by study. We might wish we could take a Bible course somewhere and come out compassionate, but it just doesn’t work that way. Compassion comes by allowing the one who already won the battle for kindness to do his work in and through us.

I am well aware that I cannot forgive or love with that kind of divine love, and neither can you. Human effort cannot produce the kind of compassion required to reach a perishing world or the kind of forgiveness that the greatest depths of depravity demand. It is supernatural and must be worked in us by God. Try as you might to love people in your own strength, you will find that words of grace and forgiveness will not be in your mouth unless they are supernaturally put there by Almighty God.

Learning to love the unlovely requires a change of heart and a molding of character that God must work into your life by the Holy Spirit.

_{Carter Conlon joined the pastoral staff of Times Square Church in 1994 and was appointed Senior Pastor in 2001. In May of 2020 he transitioned into a continuing role as General Overseer of Times Square Church, Inc.} 

The only time God’s patience with us runs out is when we refuse again and again to accept how much he loves us.

Many Christians today have been turned back into a wilderness of their own making. They have no joy, no victory. Looking at them, you’d think God had forsaken them years ago. No. He has simply turned them over to their own complaining and murmuring.

Think of the disciples! They were men of power and vision because they knew they were precious to God. Thank God they followed Christ. They stood as green trees in God’s house until their dying days. You also are precious to the Lord, despite your problems and failures. You can be a green tree in God’s house just as the apostles were. Simply stand on what God promises in his Word! It is packed full of assurances that we are priceless to him, and we can live secure in his love and devotion.

“He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me” (Psalm 18:19 NKJV).

“The Lord your God is in your midst, the mighty one, will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

“Because your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you” (Psalm 63:3). “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he will beautify the humble with salvation” (Psalm 149:4).

“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love” (Song of Solomon 2:4).

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35,38-39).

This is the foundation of true faith!

The Bible gives us a vivid illustration of the key to Christian victory in Numbers 13 and 14. Israel had sent twelve spies to search out the Promised Land. When the spies returned after forty days, ten of them planted three lies in the hearts of God’s people: 1) “There are too many people in the land and they’re too strong for us;” 2) “the cities are walled too high and the strongholds are impregnable;” and 3) “there are giants in the land and we’re no match for them. We’re helpless! Finished!”

These lies took the heart right out of Israel. Scripture says the people endured a night of despair. “So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night” (Numbers 14:1 NKJV). More than two million people were weeping, wailing and moaning, focused completely on their weaknesses and inabilities. Their wails of unbelief bombarded heaven.

Joshua and Caleb, on the other hand, had a revelation of how precious they were in God’s eyes, and that was the key to their hopeful spirit. Joshua said, “If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey’” (Numbers 14:8). In other words, “Because he delights in us, the land is as good as ours already.”

Beloved, the devil throws the same three lies at God’s people today. “Your trials are too numerous. Your temptations are too overwhelming. You are too weak to resist the power coming against you.”

As we hear the devil’s lies, the word that God spoke to Israel is for us too. “You shall be a special treasure to me above all people; for all the earth is mine” (Exodus 19:5). “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 14:2).

Like Joshua and Caleb, every victorious Christian today can have this same confidence in their heavenly Father’s love. “We can’t fail! All our enemies are meat for us because we are precious to the Lord.”